I love the internet. I've spent quite a bit of my life scrounging around the far-flung reaches of the web, and I like to think that I've learned quite a bit. I know where to find the best themes for your Tumblr, which Subreddits to avoid, how to navigate 4chan without losing (too much) of my soul. These websites are all beautiful and useful and incredibly good things, each one full of diverse communities and sub-cultures. But nothing is without its problems. Just as no place is a Utopia, no website is perfect. So let me reveal a little about these websites.

Reddit is the self-proclaimed front page of the internet, and it certainly has a great deal of power behind that claim. It currently ranks as the ninth most-visited website in America (Alexa.com), routinely making headlines for its effect on internet culture. Whether as big as being on the forefront of the internet blackout strike against SOPA and PIPA (remember those?) or as small as the "Reddit hug of death" when a smaller website is linked on Reddit and accidentally shut down by the sudden burst of views, Reddit has affected the internet in many ways. But it has its problems.

1. /R/Fatpeoplehate

Reddit has a huge number of subreddits - communities within the larger website that have specific purposes. These range from remarkably specific (/r/Babyelephantgifs) to incredibly vague (/r/askreddit). These communities can be vibrant and passionate, or caustic and aggressive, and in the case of /r/fatpeoplehate, it was both. The subreddit was, obviously, dedicated to the mockery and derision of fat people. Though the sub has been deleted (more on that in a bit), one can find their manifesto through the Wayback Machine:

"On the surface it may seem like all we do is aimlessly bully and ridicule people who have done nothing to deserve it. Look a little deeper and you'll see a more important truth[...] Here at /r/FatPeopleHate we believe that obesity is a choice. It carries negative impacts on more than just the individual directly affected, similar to drug addiction and other harmful behaviors. It is not only an indicator of low standards but lack of discipline and other mental weaknesses. Most importantly it is an expensive toll on society, reflected by the disproportionate and otherwise unnecessary burdens it places on healthcare systems[...]"

Though anyone can rationalize their hatred of a sub-group, this particular hatred was powerful in many ways. There was a large number of fat individuals who lost weight and posted, thanking the group for giving them the motivation to lose weight. These stories were frequent enough for most of Reddit to either accept or ignore the community. But that soon changed.

The subreddit soon began to break the rules of the internet, and of Reddit. Reddit's terms of use are fairly standard, and do not allow harassment or doxxing - the act of searching for and publishing a person's identity on the internet against their will. /r/fatpeoplehate purportedly began to go out of its boundaries, with members attacking other communities and individuals. The moderators of /r/fatpeoplehate were typically quick to remove anything including personal information and banned those that participated in unwanted behavior. But soon, the officials working at Reddit decided that /r/fatpeoplhate was getting to be too much and banned it outright, removing the community from the website. This was widely considered to be a bad move. Many claimed that this was infringing upon the users' free speech (though the rights are fuzzy on a privately owned website) or that the banning was a result of Reddit's burgeoning popularity, as a way of removing the unseemly subreddit. Either way, the debacle resulted in droves of users leaving for websites with more lax rules.

2. /R/Imgoingtohellforthis

Humor is difficult to be good at, especially when one is attempting to be humorous as well as offensive. Some comedians dedicate quite a bit of time and energy to being offensive without going too far. When you have a community of average individuals attempting to do the same thing, you get very bad results. The subreddit description for /r/imgoingtohellforthis states that "Tasteless 'politically incorrect' dark, offensive, & twisted humor of all types is welcome here," and thanks to anonymity (which is perhaps the only thing that is sacred on the web) many users try their hand at the craft of offensive jokes. The results are (typically) racism, sexism, Islamophobia... but remarkably little homophobia. So that's good.

Thanks to the popularity of things like Rick & Morty, Cards Against Humanity, South Park, as well as a push-back against "PC-culture," the internet is becoming more and more popular a place for people to flex their humor and offend as many as they can. Few realize that the popularity of those television shows is due to how the offensive nature is incredibly well-thought out and written by people who dedicate their lives to using humor to address serious topics. Not just because they bring offense. But as the culture of "It's just a joke" grows more and more self-justified in their crusade against political correctness, they dig their heels more and more in the mud of jokes about suicide bombing, social collapse due to refugees, transphobia, mockery of BLM, and more. These kinds of topics are literally deadly serious, and though there is a populous of comedians and writers that could tackle the topics with candor and insight, in the hands of random internet users with no other purpose but to offend, the result is uncomfortable at best.

3./R/The_Donald

A subreddit committed to Donald Trump. I wish that was all I needed to say, but there's more, so much more. This subreddit began recently and, thanks to its fervent and dedicated supporters, became such a nuisance that Reddit edited their /r/all (the page that unregistered and visiting users see) algorithm almost solely because the spam of Trump support became so ubiquitous. How did a nationalist republican become so popular on a website that is largely Libertarian-leaning? Part of the political switch is a response to Bernie Sanders. Up until Sanders announced he was pulling out of the race, Reddit was full of "Bernie-bros" that filled the site with posts about Sanders' polling, activities, history, and more. In the month or so leading to Bernie's drop, The_Donald began to push its agenda - hard. The common theory is that Trump's support was a simple push-back against the near-worshiping of Bernie Sanders. But recently, it seems to have become something even more.

The users of /r/The_Donald are either incredible satirists, or horrific fascists, or perhaps a mixture of both. As far as politics go, most of the posts are, admittedly, rather typical. On this subreddit, there is a constant flow of anti-Hillary posts. This is to be expected, and so, sadly, is the fact that most of the attacks are based upon Hillary's sex, age/health, and the like. But between these posts and articles are also a huge number of Islamophobic and racist posts. However, if anything good has come from the spam of Donald Trump memes and posts, it is that thanks to the number that reach the front page every day, there is a massive population of users that see this and are reminded to vote against the "God-emperor" (I wish I was making that up, they actually refer to him like that).


Now, It isn't fair to use these communities to vilify an entire website. As I said above, these are large websites, with far-reaching and diverse communities. For every one of these offensive or malicious subreddits, there are at least a dozen others dedicated to; tv shows, books, queer interests of all types, and even feminism.

People find homes on the internet; these are communities that support a plethora of interests and communities, for better or worse. What I have written does not in any way encapsulate the entirety of this websites personality or purpose, but I hope that by bringing forth some of the darker moments in its history, I can give its users something to think about going forward.